Mario Kart Advance (Game Boy Advance) - Circuit Theme (Famicom Disk System 2A03+2C33 Cover)

Channel:

Andrew Ambrose

Subscribers:

2,060

Published on April 25, 2023 8:50:18 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orx1W8xsMFA

Game:

Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2001)

Duration: 3:30

360 views

25

Mario Kart Advance (known internationally as Mario Kart: Super Circuit) was the first game in the Mario Kart series released on a handheld game system (in this instance, the Game Boy Advance). It was also the first Mario Kart game not to be solely developed by Nintendo. Intelligent Systems (of Fire Emblem, Panel de Pon, Paper Mario and WarioWare fame) was the main developer, with some Nintendo personnel such as Shigeru Miyamoto being involved. I didn't get to play it until I got it on the Wii U Virtual Console around 2015-2017, but I certainly am quite fond of it. Easily the best part about it (besides the large amount of tracks) is the music, which really seems to pay a lot of homage to the music done by Soyo Oka for the series' debut game Super Mario Kart (its Rainbow Road theme even alludes to Soyo's original theme for Rainbow Road at the start, which no other Rainbow Road theme seems to do). One particularly great example of what I mean is the first track theme you hear in the game, the Circuit Theme (the theme used for Peach Circuit, Mario Circuit and Luigi Circuit). I first heard this wonderful tune as a young boy playing Mario Kart DS, which featured recreations of Peach Circuit and Luigi Circuit from the GBA, so hearing the original rendition of it playing the GBA game for the first time was definitely a treat. I've decided it's finally time for me to do this song justice with a cover. I was originally considering using Famicom's 2A03 with the Namco 163's sound expansion for the sake of consistency with my previous Mario Kart cover, Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4AzdWuvgiw&list=PL-LTtRfSmnVVvQqMw5PYDni0slGpeTcLf&index=62). I was also considering the Namco C30 WSG chip since I've been working with it quite often recently. But, I instead decided to try something akin to the music Soyo Oka did for an older Nintendo racing game, Famicom Grand Prix 2: 3D Hot Rally for the Famicom Disk System, which I felt would be a perfect fit for the song. Not to mention, it's been months since I did anything with the FDS in Dn-FamiTracker, so I knew I had to make my move. Lo and behold, I think I was right. Granted, this one proved to be tougher than most of my other covers. As you can hear, the song has a very frantic melody, bass line, and percussion; they're so frantic that the song is almost like freeform jazz. Thus, I really had to do my best to make sure I didn't time any of the notes incorrectly, and I think I managed it well for the most part. The other thing is that the foobar2000 plugin I use for studying game music ROM files, Game Emu Player, does not support any of the Game Boy Advance's own music ROM file formats. Not to mention, all the sound samples in Mario Kart: Super Circuit's music are played through one of the Game Boy Advance's two DAC channels (the other DAC channel is used for the voices and sampled sound effects), so I wouldn't be able to hear the separate instruments playing in that channel using foobar. Thankfully, I managed to find a program that plays music directly from Game Boy Advance ROMs called VG Music Studio. It even separates the different DAC instruments into their own mutable channels, allowing me to do my thing. The only downside is that it doesn't seem to have a speed modifier like Game Emu Player has, but Orj's recent oscilloscope deconstruction of Mario Kart DS's version of the Circuit Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sG60_2W7jo) came in handy for any parts of the song that were too fast for my ears (mainly with the percussion). In spite of all these odds, I managed to complete this cover, and I'm incredibly pleased with how it turned out. I hope you guys enjoy it, and be sure to let me know what you think of it. ;D
One more thing! I'm including another bonus in the downloads! I recently did a Namco WSG cover of Music 3 from Nintendo's NES version of Tetris. I really like how it turned out, and I'm treating you all to it. ^w^

Here are the downloads for this song: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q8OKM5FC0JvPafnTMcqo-WWmILvApAMf?usp=share_link

Composed by: Kenichi Nishimaki, Masanobu Matsunaga, and/or Minako Hamano
Famicom Disk System Arrangement by: Andrew Ambrose



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Andyana
Eric M Ambrose

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